Li beats Serena in Stuttgart shock

PHOTO: AP

China’s Li Na claimed a famous scalp on Wednesday when she defeated world No.1 Serena Williams 0-6, 6-1, 6-4 in Stuttgart and pretty much cost the powerfully built American her top world ranking.

In a dramatic match that see-sawed several times, Li rallied after being overwhelmed in the first set to put Williams under immense pressure.

“I was very nervous in the first set and I just didn’t have a chance,” said Li, who lost to Russia’s Dinara Safina in the Olympic Games semi-finals, having beaten Serena’s sister Venus in the quarter-finals.

“I told myself: ‘Come on, it’s only been 20 minutes — you could still win this after an hour.’ I knew I just had to hang in there,” she said.

Williams started the second round match in spectacular style as she demolished Li 6-0 in just 21 minutes.

But despite being overpowered early on, the Chinese star replied by taking a 3-0 lead in the next set and used a strong base-line game to take the second 6-1 in just 28 minutes.

The game was delicately poised at 3-3 in the third when Williams missed her line shot and was broken by Li who extended her advantage to 5-3, but Williams defended three match points and held her serve to give herself a faint hope at 5-4 down.

Li had to defend a break point of her own before hitting an ace to win the match after one hour, 35 minutes.

“I just started to make a lot of errors,” Williams said afterwards. “I pretty much gave it to her, it was like I said: ‘Here you go, you have a win today.’”

“Maybe I started to doubt myself, I made a lot of mistakes which helps her cause,” Williams said. “She played really well, especially in the third set where she just fought for everything.”